Changing the Narrative

Good afternoon.

My name is Sherma, and I am a fictionist. As a fictionist, I make up stories based on my experiences and observations. I tell stories as I see them, or as I imagine them. But today, I will talk about a true story.

When I was in my teens, life had been difficult financially. It was so difficult that I often wondered why others seemed to have it so easy, while my family struggled. But now that I am an adult, I look back and realize that to the contrary, I'd had a privileged life.

There are many reasons why I say so, but let me focus on just one: the gift of writing.

As with anything, my foray into writing started with an introduction. I was introduced to it by my father, a literary artist writing short stories and novelettes in Ilocano.

When we were young, my three younger brothers and I would gather around our father at night. We would play indoor games with him before going to bed. At other nights, we would ask him to tell us a story. My father always obliged.

He told us about famous Philippine folklores such as Malakas and Maganda, Ang Matsing at ang Pagong, and mythical characters such as the kapre, the tikbalang, the manananggal, and many more. He also told us about princes and princesses of faraway kingdoms of long, long time ago.  He introduced us to the princesses in distress, and the princes that rescued them in the nick of time. But he never introduced Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Snow White, and all the other princesses and their respective princes to us. This was because in my father’s stories, they never existed. The princesses he told us about were either named Princess Sherma or Princess Jing. (Jing is my nickname – reserved for family members and close relatives.)

Those story-telling moments had been magical. From my father’s stories, I realized that I could live in my imagination; that there are many worlds out there to be explored; and that there is a life right here that must be lived.

Unlike many girls, I knew even as a kid that my father's stories were make-believe. I knew, because long after each story-telling session had ended, I would still be thinking about the characters and the plot, and I would try to re-imagine the stories; sometimes, even revising them.

It was fortunate that my father used my name in his stories. The gesture showed me how much I meant to him. It also allowed me to ‘own’ the stories. By thinking that the stories were about me and that I owned them, I felt free to revise them. So I did, but I did not know then why I felt compelled to make changes.

It was when I was in college that I realized why. In one of my GE subjects -- Social Science I -- we had a discussion on political correctness/incorrectness of bedtime stories. We worked on Little Red Riding Hood. It was then that I realized that I did not like many of the Western stories my father told us about. 

I never liked it that the Princesses always needed rescuing. That they were so weak. That they could not fight – much less win – their own battles. In my revised version, I imagined the princesses fighting off the monsters by themselves, and winning. I also imagined myself wielding my own sword, and maiming my enemies, my own demons.

I was also disturbed that the ugly Princesses had to become beautiful toward the end of the story. I was worried about the message such ending gave our children: that they only deserved to be loved if they were beautiful. I was worried that such flawed and dangerous message was incorporated in our children's stories -- why no one seemed to want to change them. 

That was how I started becoming a writer: revising stories in my mind. Then slowly, I started creating stories -- for myself. Yes, just for myself. I was not really convinced I could write. I was a writer in denial for a long time. I was afraid of getting out of my shell and be exposed.

I thought it was already a great privilege that I could travel from our world to those other worlds in my mind at will. I thought it was such a magnificent gift that whenever I was down and hurting yet unwilling to expose my deepest worries, and fears, and thoughts to another soul, I had my writing to turn to. I could make my pen do the talking, and I had all the blank pages in the world to pour out my heart and soul to. To me, that was more than enough.

But soon, I began feeling some restlessness deep within me. I felt there was something I had to be doing, but wasn't. 

When, in my 20s, I gave in to the urge to write, I first went back to the stories I "revised" as a child and realized that not only were there so many people without a voice and so many stories that needed to be told, there also were so many narratives that were dangerous and had to be changed.

So I got out of my cocoon, and wrote socially relevant stories – stories that are not being talked about openly. I wrote about diaspora. I delved on abortion. On rape and pedophilia. On abuse.  On role reversals. And many more.

So this is one reason that I write.

And this is why I consider writing a great privilege and responsibility. I have been given the gift and the chance not just to write my own story and that of others, but also to try to change the social narrative. I intend to do just that. One story at a time.